Stormy weather

Just listening to the heavy down pour and the thunder and lightening outside early this morning. A stormy- weather kind of day. One laying beside me on the couch asleep because the storm was "so booming." This storm woke me before my alarm so I've had time with GOD looking at my own storms in my soul. Trying to take every thought captive (2 Cor 10:3-5) in the midst of these rumbles. That's the battle, isn't it?! Always the distractions, the "booms, crashes and flashes" that beg for our attention pulling us away from Truth. Change in our hearts won't ever happen unless the storms and down pours in our lives push us to the ONE Who made them, the ONE in them , and the ONLY ONE WHO can lovingly pull us out of them. It's the truth of the gospel that will produce any lasting fruit and certainly any lasting change in us.

John Newton presents to us such freedom and beauty in these words about The One in the midst of our storms:

How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
In a believer's ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.

It makes the wounded spirit whole,
And calms the troubled breast;
'Tis manna to the hungry soul,
And gives the weary rest.

Dear name! The Rock on which we build;
Our shield and hiding-place;
Our never-failing treasury, filled
With boundless stores of grace.k